Nayantara Sahgal

Nayantara Sahgal is the author of nine novels and six non-fiction works including the autobiography Prison and Chocolate Cake. Her novels have reflected India’s political life since Independence, from its high idealism to its present crisis of credibility. She has received the Sahitya Akademi Award, the Sinclair Prize and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize (Eurasia). She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has held Fellowships in the United States at the Bunting Institute, the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars as well as the National Humanities Centre.

Jawaharlal Nehru: Civilizing A Savage World presents an intimate view of the influences, encounters, and defining historical moments that forged the vision of India’s first prime minister. Drawing from the Nehru and the Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit papers, and from Nehru’s letters to Sahgal, his niece, this book combines history with personal recollections to show how Nehru helped navigate India’s transition from a colony to an influential modern nation.

Discussing the significant issue of Independent India’s foreign policy – characterized by the Non-Alignment principle and the establishment of relations with the United States, Britain, the Soviet Union and China – Sahgal reveals much about Nehru’s political astuteness, realism and aversion to rigid economic doctrines, as well as the profound impact India’s non-aligned policy had on the world of the time.